They have recognised their folly at the International Cricket Council: the World Cup is going to be reduced to 10 teams. So there is the chance of a manageable tournament that sustains the interest of players and fans alike at the start as well as at the end. But that will be in 2015. In 2011 the same old impediments to a decent competition remain.

We have recognised for a decade or more that the World Cup has become a monumental own goal for cricket. The opportunity to promote the game and to provide a thrilling platform for the world's best cricketers to display their skills has been squandered far too often. Instead the primary concern seems to have been to make as much money as possible and to fulfil all those lucrative television contracts.

As a consequence of the bloated format the 50-over version of the game is vilified unjustly. Fifty overs a side can produce a superb spectacle provided each and every match seems to matter. In recent World Cups there have been too many meaningless games over too long a time. So cricket has been irrevocably damaged.

Last time in the West Indies the stands were usually empty. The prices were too high and the restrictions upon spectators so rigid and so divorced from what is the norm in the Caribbean that the locals soon lost interest. Moreover the craven nature of the competition's format was epitomised by a farcical final between Australia and Sri Lanka in Barbados, in which the umpires and the referee did not know the regulations.

This time the format has changed a bit but it will still tarnish the game. In the West Indies it was a calamity for the money men that India were blown out of the tournament so quickly after their defeat to Bangladesh. Pakistan's early exit after losing to Ireland did not help much either.

So for this tournament precautions have been taken. The major sides can afford the odd slip-up. In a 14-team competition, which starts on Saturday, it is going to take a whole month to ditch six of them before the quarter-finals, which begin on 23 March. Of those six sides only Bangladesh have a realistic chance of ousting one of the old order in pursuit of place in the quarter-finals. A month is rather a long time to see whether Bangladesh can do that.

Allan Border, a World Cup-winning captain in 1987, put it in concise Australian: "The way the tournament is structured you'll have to play like absolute drongos not to get through to the quarter-finals." If only all the teams in the group games were playing just for semi-finals slots there would be plenty of spice in just about every fixture.

No matter how much money is generated in the month of qualification matches the game will look foolish and the bulk of the players, many of whom must have felt exhausted when they arrived in the subcontinent, will be driven to distraction at the turgid nature of the qualifying process. England's cricketers, in particular, have been away from home since October and are likely to be mentally and physically shot by the time the quarter-finals eventually come around.

However, if the England and Wales Cricket Board protests too much it should be reminded that it does have a say in how much cricket its men are asked to play. It has the power to negotiate all those reciprocal deals that end up with its team required to play another seven ODIs in Australia after the Ashes series. The ECB, like the ICC, seldom resists the opportunity to grab that extra buck rather than yield to cricketing common sense. The notion of "leaving 'em wanting more" is alien to the modern cricketing administrator.

Still, there was unbridled optimism among all those present at the opening ceremony at the Bangbandhu Stadium. Perhaps we should just try to be swept along by that. So here is a bold undertaking not to mention the format of the tournament again – beyond today's final paragraph.

It would be a remarkable achievement and a wonderful surprise if somehow this World Cup can transcend the greed of those who have organised it.